The present invention is related to an individual identifying apparatus for identifying as to whether or not a person to be identified is made coincident with a registered individual. More specifically, the present invention is directed to an individual identifying apparatus and an individual identifying method, for performing individual identification operation from an image obtained by photographing irides of eyes of the person to be identified.
Conventionally, individual identifying apparatus capable of identifying persons from one another by employing irides of eyes are known in this field. As an example of such individual identifying apparatus, one conventional individual identifying apparatus 100 disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei. 9-212722 is indicated in FIG. 12. In this drawing, the individual identifying apparatus 100 is arranged by the pressure sensitive switch 101 for detecting presence of the person located in front of this individual identifying apparatus 100, the lighting device 102 for lighting the face and the eyes of the person, the camera 103 for photographing the iris portion of this person, the power control unit 104 for controlling turn-ON/OFF operations of the power supplies of the lighting device 102 and the camera 103, and the identifying unit 105 for executing the individual identification based upon the picture of the camera 103. When presence of the person is detected by the pressure sensitive switch 101, both the power supply of the lighting device 102 and the power supply of the camera 103 are turned ON by the power control unit 104, and then, the iris portion of the eye is photographed by the camera 103. The identifying unit 105 may confirm as to whether or not this photographed person is identical to the registered person based upon the image of this photographed iris portion.
In the above-described conventional individual identifying apparatus, the dimension of this individual identifying apparatus is increased, and also, the high-precision camera is necessarily required so as to photograph the iris portion from the long distance, and furthermore, the camera angle thereof should be positioned with high precision. As a result, there is such a problem that the manufacturing cost of this individual identifying apparatus becomes high. In addition, there is another problem that the individual identification by this individual identifying apparatus may be readily and adversely influenced by extraneous light, that is to say, when the iris portion is photographed, reflections may occur due to extraneous light, so that irides cannot be clearly photographed.